Twitter’s CEO is set to appear on Capitol Hill tomorrow to answer questions from lawmakers over how the company moderates its content.
Twitter’s CEO will try to convince Congress tomorrow that his company has no political bias against Republicans and that the platform remains open to all viewpoints.
„The notion that we would silence any political perspective is antithetical to our commitment to free expression,“ Jack Dorsey wrote in his prepared testimony, which was published on Tuesday.
Twitter’s CEO is set to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee at 9:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday, followed by a 1:30 p.m. hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which released Dorsey’s testimony today. The House panel’s focus is „transparency and accountability,“ while the Senate hearing, which will also feature Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, will discuss foreign influence of social media platforms.
In late July, Twitter faced a surge of complaints from Republicans, including President Trump, over the alleged “ shadow banning “ of conservative accounts from the platform’s search bar.
Tomorrow, we will address serious concerns about how Twitter moderates its platform. Oregonians and millions of Americans deserve answers as to how their content is policed on social media. What questions would you like to ask @Jack during tomorrow’s hearing? #TwitterTestifies
Since then, Trump has warned that the US may investigate Twitter, along with Facebook and Google, for silencing conservative viewpoints. However, Dorsey is pushing back on the banning claims. His prepared testimony paints a picture of a social media platform seeking to root out harassment and spam, but with content moderation processes designed without political bias in mind.
„We do not shadowban anyone based on political ideology. In fact, from a simple business perspective and to serve the public conversation, Twitter is incentivized to keep all voices on the platform,“ the testimony reads.
Dorsey himself has admitted Twitter’s employees tend to be “ more left-leaning .“ But the company blames the purported shadow banning on the company’s software algorithms, which are designed to detect and stop bad actors from manipulating the platform to elevate their presence. According to Twitter, both Republicans and Democrats were affected by the error; in total, 600,000 different accounts across the globe were accidentally omitted from auto-populating in Twitter’s search bar.
„And most accounts affected had nothing to do with politics at all,“ the testimony adds. Dorsey’s prepared statement goes on to say that „conservative voices have a strong presence on Twitter.“ He points out that in 2017, for instance, Twitter hosted 59.5 million tweets referencing President Trump’s „Make America Great Again“ slogan.
However, Republicans haven’t been the only ones critical of Twitter. On the opposite end, left-leaning critics have slammed Dorsey’s decision to let conservative web show host Alex Jones remain on the platform, even as YouTube and Facebook banned ban him over hate speech. Twitter banned Jones for a week.
In his own testimony, Dorsey plans to say one of Twitter’s guiding objectives has been its mission to ensure all voices can be heard. Nevertheless, the company has been trying to crack down on spammers and abusers. It’s also been considering ways to expose the Twitter populace to different viewpoints as a way to break down echo chambers on the platform.
What this might look like in terms of serving political-related tweets remains unclear. But in his testimony, Dorsey says the company intends to encourage more „healthy debate“ and „critical thinking“ over the platform.
„We know the way earn more trust around how we make decisions on our platform is to be as transparent as possible,“ he adds.
But not everyone is convinced by Dorsey’s attempt at transparency. The privacy group EPIC is calling on US lawmakers to push Twitter to make its software algorithms on content moderation public. „For example, Twitter could make public its search algorithm to make clear that it is not preferencing accounts affiliated with certain views,“ the group said.
